According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, by allowing ads for crisis pregnancy centers to appear when a person searches for abortion clinics, Google was both violating its own advertising policy and lying to women. NARAL president Ilyse Hogue said that anyone looking for abortion services should find just that when they turn to Google. She writes:
Anything less is aiding and abetting ideologically driven groups with a calculated campaign to lie to and shame women making one of the most important decisions of [their] lives.
Google fell for it. And as a result, women who now search for abortion clinics will be denied the chance to learn about their real choices and the help they can receive when they choose life for their children.
Crisis pregnancy centers are not created by people who are in the business of shaming women. What crisis pregnancy centers do is provide women facing an unplanned pregnancy with resources, baby gear, and emotional support. They connect women with prenatal care. They provide them with information on housing and on continuing their education. They offer them a helping hand throughout the pregnancy, during delivery, and even after birth. They also talk to them about adoption. The people who volunteer in crisis pregnancy centers invest their hearts in caring for these women and their babies. Many women who have abortions complain about the lack of compassion and the herding of women into and out of the abortion clinic.
National Right to Life Committee President Carol Tobias wrote in an email to The Hill that Google has made a mistake that will alter many lives. She calls their move to drop the ads a “war on women by limiting knowledge of the options and services available to women. Google’s decision to refuse ads by the centers is unconscionable.”
Hogue (and Google, by extension) are right about one thing: abortion is “one of the most important decisions” a woman or couple will make. The decision to end a person’s life is a serious one, and the decision to end your own child’s life will undoubtedly haunt you for the rest of your life. Therefore, those considering abortion should have all of the resources available to them, including information on crisis pregnancy centers that they might not otherwise know exist. Some women, when searching for abortion clinics, are still looking for a way to keep their babies. Denying them that knowledge and that comfort is a complete disservice to women everywhere and will lead many women down a path of deep regret and turmoil.
All NARAL cares about is denying women the truth and the help and guidance that they seek, because the result would be the closure of abortion clinics across the nation.
